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A year ago on September 13, 2016, Ermanno Rea passed away. He was born in Naples in '27 (the same year as my father, rest in peace, only that my dad was taken by cancer 10 years ago), he never managed to graduate from the Faculty of Arts, perhaps also due to the war where he became a partisan with a Brigade operating in Tuscany between '44 and '45. He was a journalist, photographer, and as a writer he authored about a dozen books, including the only one I read, "La Dismissione" of 2002, from which Gianni Amelio made a beautiful film in 2006 titled "La Stella Che Non C'è" with Sergio Castellitto.
Rea, after leaving journalism, took the famous "sabbatical year" and to be precise, he took five years, traveling in Europe and also visiting Asia.
To write this book, he returned to his Naples to closely follow the dismantling of the ILLVA in Bagnoli, the steel plant that had become the symbol of a city striving to overcome its economic underdevelopment by betting everything, for better or for worse, on industrialization. As Ferruccio Fabrizio wrote about this book:
"It reopened a wound on the future of the factory (which had already closed in '91) and the city.
And when the Ilva di Bagnoli celebrated a hundred years of history in 2009, his words had the explosive effect of a cast iron pour."
While Francesco Erbani wrote about the dismantling:
"The end of the workers’ dream of a city that had tried to redeem a plebeian history."
About this fascinating book that I read in one breath about fifteen years ago when it came out, it was also described as:
"It is a work that has gained a burning relevance over time.
It recounts the fate of the Ilva di Bagnoli and working-class Naples through the story of Vincenzo Buonocore, who joined Ilva as a simple laborer and over the years became a specialized technician leading the Continuous Casting."
He is tasked with disassembling his department, sold to the Chinese, and decides to carry out the assigned task with "absolute" precision and rigor.
This dismantling, he tells himself, must happen "bolt by bolt".
I conclude with these words found on the Feltrinelli website:
"The novel closes with a funeral procession and with the premonition of future disasters: from the spread of unemployment to the unrestrained rule of a mafia destined to grow unchecked.
To Naples was added Taranto, but the question remains the same: Why such blind improvisation?
The answer of all the Buonocores of Italy, old and new does not change:
‘Because we have a ragged capitalism and an inept and voracious ruling class.’...
p.s. in the image, the Spanish poster of Gianni Amelio's film
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